As another new year beckons and the fight to protect the climate continues apace, Marco Magrini sends a message to the planet we call home

Happy new revolution around the sun, dear Spaceship Earth. You wander through the cosmos at breakneck speed – at 66,000 miles per hour around your star, at 487,000 miles per hour around the Milky Way’s centre and, together with the Milky Way, at 536,000 miles per hour around the local group of galaxies. Yet, oddly enough, the living creatures you carry aboard have a mystifying impression of stillness.

This could be why the current dominant species (the self-named Homo sapiens) hold the wrong idea about your boundless sturdiness. They think you are ‘too big to fail’, while in reality you are too big, too frail. Perhaps it is because of this misconception that this year, an estimated 8 to 12 billion tons of plastic will be added to your oceans and 55 billion tons of carbon dioxide will be emitted into your delicately balanced atmosphere.

The number of humans you ferry through the universe has just crossed the 7.5 billion mark. Of course, not all of them deny the fragility of your warmer atmosphere, of your thinner glaciers and more acidic oceans. For instance, the Club of Rome just issued a much-needed ‘Climate Emergency Plan’ where the first of many recommendations reads: ‘No new investments in coal, oil and gas exploration and development after 2020.’

Yet, not enough people believe there’s a man-made emergency to be faced and as a result many doubt that oil states and multinationals will ever refrain from digging out their fossil revenues.

As you remember, gamma radiation of 500 million years ago and a meteorite of 66 million years ago already caused mass extinctions. Another one is expected by the end of the century but, for the first time since your formation 4.5 billion years ago, it will be self-inflicted. All life you carry is interconnected. From bacteria to elephants, all species depend on their habitat as well as on each other. The so-called sapiens do not grasp this reality too well. But don’t worry, whatever they do, nobody can ever halt your cosmic merry-go-round.

Happy new year, Spaceship Earth. And thank you.

This was published in the January 2019 edition of Geographical magazine

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Brazil’s shift to the right of the political spectrum could be bad news for the natural world, suggests Marco Magrini

From the natural world’s viewpoint, Brazil’s new choice of president is a bad sign. The country is home to more than 60 per cent of the Amazon, a forest acknowledged to be one of humanity’s best insurances against runaway climate change. Unfortunately, Jair Bolsonaro has already suggested that his new, right-wing Brazil will soon lower the bar for environmental protection and start exploiting the Amazon for logging, farming and mining.

For the climate, no news could be worse. Deforestation is responsible for 11 per cent of global CO2 emissions because, once felled, trees release the carbon dioxide they have previously captured via photosynthesis back into the atmosphere. It’s why Norway (an oil-producing country with a guilty conscience) has invested nearly $2billion over the last ten years to slow down tree logging in the Amazon. And it worked: after a disastrous year in 2004 (28,000 square kilometres of tree cover was destroyed) Amazon deforestation has slowed to well under 10,000 square kilometres a year. Germany and the UK have now reached a similar preservation agreement with Colombia.

With the election taking place last month, Bolsonaro has at least four years in power and it looks as if he may use this time to blackmail the world, utilising a system in which those who want to preserve the Amazon have to pay a bounty. It’s a stance that may be familiar to Vladimir Putin who has previously pointed to the fact that Russia’s immense forests allow the world to breath, while skirting over its role as one of the biggest producers of oil and gas. Brazil, a much smaller oil producer, may try to play the same card.

Admittedly, being blackmailed by a ruthless populist like Bolsonaro will not be pleasant. Yet, other countries proven to have a poor record on civil rights, such as Saudi Arabia, Kazakhstan and Venezuela, have all been exploiting the world’s oil addiction and collecting a perpetual stream of dollars. Is handing over money to Bolsonaro any worse?

Humankind needs the forests in Brazil (and those in the Congo, Indonesia and Siberia) merely to survive. This is why options are limited. When a man around the corner commands you to ‘stand and deliver’, there are not that many choices.

This was published in the December 2018 edition of Geographical magazine

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Most plants thicken their leaves in response to higher carbon levels in the atmosphere – a new climate change model reveals this could have a big impact on global warming

For many years, scientists have observed a curious phenomenon among plants – most species thicken their leaves when levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise. This leafy weight-gain, which can see leaves fatten-up by as much as a third, has been observed in many species of plants, from woody trees to crops such as wheat and rice.

Two scientists from the University of Washingtonassessed the impact of this response on the climate. They took existing climate change models that use the high atmospheric carbon dioxide levels expected later this century, and found that when thicker leaves were added to the equation the amount of carbon in the atmosphere increased further. Their new model predicted an extra 5.8 petagrams (or 6.39 billion tons) of carbon in the atmosphere per year when leaf thickness was taken into account, levels not far off the amount of carbon released due to human-generated fossil fuel emissions (8 petagrams, or 8.8 billion tons).

Abigail Swann, assistant professor of atmospheric sciences and biology, who conducted the research with doctoral student Marlies Kovenock, explains that the results are due to the fact that plants with thicker leaves photosynthesise less and are therefore less effective as a carbon sink. This isn’t due to the individual leaves acting differently but rather a cumulative effect. ‘What we found is that if plants make their leaves thicker, those leaves cost more to the plant to build and so we found that plants built less leaf area in total. That meant that the photosynthesis rate at a global rate was lower.’ In short, fewer leaves = less photosynthesis = less carbon dioxide converted into oxygen = more carbon in the atmosphere.

Swann explains that they also looked at the temperature effect of these leaf changes. Their simulations indicated that global temperatures could rise an extra 0.3 to 1.4ºC beyond what has already been projected to occur by scientists studying climate change. ‘About half of that temperature effect came from the physical effects of the fact that there’s less leaf area,’ says Swann. ‘In places such as the Amazon where it’s quite hot, a lot of cooling of the land surface occurs due to evaporation of water through leaves (transpiration), and so with less leaf area there’s less cooling of the surface through that process.’

In forests such as the Amazon, less total leaf area means less cooling of the land surface

Swann wants to understand this process further. Less total leaf area doesn’t seem like a good competitive strategy for plants that have to compete for light, and so it’s not yet clear why they do it. Though there are some theories as to why plants thicken their leaves, there’s no decisive answer to the question and unlocking the mystery could reveal more about the global effect of the phenomenon.

For Swann the key thing to note is that this new model illustrates how many factors are at play in our climate system. She wants to see physiological changes to plants investigated further and plant traits, such as changing leaf mass, considered in climate projections. ‘Biology does have a pretty big impact on the climate we experience in the future and it’s one of the things we don’t understand very well,’ she says. ‘We need to understand the responses that plants have, and we need to know more about how plants work because there are global-scale implications.’

For now it seems likely that plants will continue to thicken-up given the continual rise in carbon dioxide levels, mostly caused by human industrial activity. In 2013, carbon dioxide levels surpassed 400 parts per million (ppm) for the first time in recorded history and the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere today hovers around 410 parts per million. Scientists predict that within a century, it may rise as high as 900ppm. When it comes to the implications of this on plants we’re only just starting to pay proper attention.

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Not just the preserve of flatulent cows, methane is causing problems on a much wider scale discovers Marco Magrini

Odourless, colourless and ruthless. In its structural simplicity (one carbon atom surrounded by four hydrogen atoms), methane can be a real pain in the neck. The gas is naturally generated by the fermentation of organic matter, such as pig manure, but also comes from sources as disparate as rice fields and cattle belch. As a greenhouse gas, it is at least 80 times more potent than carbon dioxide, while the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates that it has been responsible for 20 per cent of global warming since pre-industrial times.

In industrial times the worst emissions have taken place. Along with humanity’s excessive craving for pig and cow meat, the very fossil fuels that are responsible for carbon dioxide emissions have spewed out massive amounts of methane too. A string of recent studies has revealed that 2.3 per cent of natural gas escapes when used as fuel, nearly double the official estimates; that methane concentrations in the atmosphere have risen sharply in the last 20 years; and that nearly 70 per cent of annual methane emissions come from the fossil fuel sector.

Methane, the main component of natural gas (to which an offensive odour is added for security reasons), seeps out of gas wells, not to mention the miles of pipelines and municipal distribution lines. It escapes from oil operations too, where it is often burned-off on site – so-called ‘flaring’. ‘Roughly half of the methane the oil and gas industry is emitting could be cut at no cost,’ recently claimed Fatih Birol, head of the International Energy Agency.

With an added cost, it could be restrained almost completely. In oil wells in which hydrogen sulphide is present – an odourless, colourless gas that is much more deadly, killing people as they inhale – the oil industry has developed zero leak technology. Why not use the same technology to prevent methane from flying away?

A group of the top oil and gas companies recently pledged to slash methane emissions by a fifth by 2025. Yet, the American administration has just started to relax regulations on the containment of methane leaks from fossil fuel operations. It is not just about Big Oil. It is about tens of thousands of oil and gas wells owned by private companies, often tiny, who pay little or no regard to the problems of letting methane escape.

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Barrett didn’t linger on how she had recently joined more than 300,000 people at the People’s Climate March in her home state of New York, or how she spoke at the signing of the historic Paris Agreement and became a fellow at the Alliance for Climate Education – all before her 18th birthday. Nor did she single out leaders and industries who ignore scientific facts for short-term ends. And she didn't dwell on her long-term involvement with 20 other young people in a landmark climate change litigation case.

‘We must ensure that we are not characterised or held prisoner by our mistakes of the past,’ she said calmly, ‘but that we are defined by our perseverance and bravery of the present.’

The 21 youth are suing the federal government on constitutional grounds over climate change. The non-profit Our Children’s Trust law firm of Eugene, Oregon is spearheading the ground breaking legal action (Image: Robin Loznak/Our Children’s Trust)

She may not have made it the focus of her speech, but Barrett's participation in a current legal case is significant. Twenty-one plaintiffs, aged between 11 and 22, were due to have their day in court on 29 October in a lawsuit called Juliana v US. They were to be accompanied by their pro bono lawyers from Our Children’s Trust (OCT) and an ex-NASA director, James Hansen, heralded as ‘the father of climate science’.

The case was originally filed in 2015 (against the Obama administration) at the US District Court for the District of Oregon. The plaintiffs argued that despite five decades of awareness by the US government, continued endorsement of a fossil fuel energy system compromised their constitutional right to ‘life, liberty, and property’.

The legal claims are as diverse and as creative as the plaintiffs themselves. During argument at the US Court of Appeal for the Ninth Circuit in December 2017, in which the government asked the court to dismiss the case, an 18-year-old Obama-prize-winning hip-hop artist of Aztec descent explained his experiences of increased drought, declining snowpack and flooding in Colorado. On the other side of court, government lawyer Eric Grant continued to dryly characterise the case as being of ‘clearly meritless character’. In the context of the impending climate emergency – detailed this October in the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5ºC – the courtroom contrast was as shameful as it was cinematic. The Court of Appeal rejected the government's argument and set 29 October as the trial date.

Then, just 11 days before trial, US government defence lawyers submitted a third and final request for the case to be dismissed. Hurdling the jurisdiction of the Oregon District Court, the request was received and a temporary, administrative stay was granted by the Supreme Court to allow it time to consider the federal government’s petition. On 22 October the plaintiffs filed a response to this delay, requesting that the court allow their trial to proceed and pointing to numerous mischaracterisations of the lawsuit. As of yet, the case has not been heard, but it is not yet over. In Eugene, Oregon, and across the US, young people are now rallying outside dozens of courthouses calling for intergenerational justice on an urgent issue they didn’t create but are burdened to inherit.

Government lawyers do not dispute established climate science in this case, or that mankind is responsible for observed atmospheric changes. What the US government under the Trump administration continues to contest are the legal rights of the plaintiffs. OCT lawyer Julia Olson has built her case partly around the ‘public trust’ doctrine. With origins in Roman Law, the doctrine prevents the government of any country from taking actions that will deny the future well-being of its citizens. It applies to running water, the sea and – crucially – the air.

When district judge Ann Aiken ruled back in 2016 that the trial could go ahead, she stated: ‘I have no doubt that the right to a climate system capable of sustaining human life is fundamental to a free and ordered society.’ But her statement marked only the start of the battle. Defence lawyers last week argued at the Supreme Court that Judge Aiken’s statement is ‘entirely without basis in this nation’s history or tradition’. As federal lawyer Eric Grant told the judges: ‘This court has exceeded its prescribed jurisdiction, and… is on a collision course with the executive branch.’

Climate Change expert James Hansen speaks during a press briefing with 21 youth plaintiffs on the steps of the federal courthouse in Eugene (Image: Robin Loznak/Our Children’s Trust)

The greatest mistake the government seems to be making is to underestimate their young opponents. In their October request for dismissal they referred to the plaintiffs as ‘21 minor children’. That was incorrect when the case was filed back in 2015. It’s certainly incorrect now. More than half of the Juliana plaintiffs are now old enough to elect politicians that represent their values in the imminent mid-term elections. They represent diverse indigenous communities from the Tangle People Clan to the Yankton Sioux Nation. Their experiences of climate change range from increased ice storms and wildfires in Alaska, to rising sea levels and algae blooms in Florida. They have experience outside Washington D.C. and have conversed with the leaders of nations.

Young people in the US, and around the world, are increasingly unwilling to hedge their future on the received fossil-fuel wisdom of their elders. With the absence of vested interests, and with no distorting political lens with which to view the world, they have a unique vantage on a planet headed for mass loss of species, destruction of island nations, crop failures, disease, habituated natural disasters, mass migrations and potential war within their lifetimes. As well as pursuing justice through the courts, some are now taking direct action to challenge the climate deniers still in power. From August of this year, 15-year old Swedish student Greta Thunberg has been striking from school until Sweden aligns with the Paris Agreement on emission reductions. Her actions have sparked solidarity strikes across Australia from even younger activists.

For the Juliana plaintiffs it is crucial that youth-led climate litigation has worked before. In April 2018, 25 activists from across Colombia, aged between 7 and 25, successfully won a landmark climate lawsuit against their government. The ruling required the president and the ministries of environment and agriculture to develop an intergenerational pact for the life of the Colombian Amazon within four months. These executive agencies were tasked with reversing the trend of deforestation and reaching net zero emissions by 2020 to comply with existing commitments under the Paris Agreement.

The successful Colombian climate plaintiffs (Image: Dejusticia)

Both the Colombian and the Juliana case utilised the expert evidence of Dr James Hansen. In his advisory opinion to the Bogota court, the NASA scientist drew on his 2017 research Young People’s Burden in which he explains how ‘continued high fossil fuel emissions today place a burden on young people to undertake massive technological CO2 extraction if they are to limit climate change and its consequences’.

Colombian lawyers from the advocacy and social justice organisation Dejusticia used a powerful civil-rights legal tool called a Tutela. Once invoked, a judge must resolve the case within ten days. Gabriela Eslava, one of the lawyers, drew inspiration from the successfulUrgenda climate litigation case in the Netherlands as well as the progress of Juliana. She notes how the deliberately narrow filing of her lawsuit in Colombia avoided conflict and helped expedite proceedings.

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Photos courtesy of DeJusticia

‘We need global leadership to work towards our long-term existence,’ concluded Juliana plaintiff Vic Barratt when speaking at the UN General Assembly in 2016. International consensus, cooperation and leadership is the planetary-level requirement for addressing what Dr Hansen refers to as the ‘mortal threat’ of climate change.

On a national level, Juliana-type litigation could be a useful tool in strong-arming governments who are disengaged with the climate crisis. At the individual level, it needs a little imagination. The younger generations are showing they are capable of visualising climate breakdown and its consequences, not only for the duration of their lifetimes, but for unborn generations too.

As Barratt said at the UN: ‘I could stand up here and tell you a personal story about my life, and the effect climate change has had on me. But this isn’t a story about me. This is a story about all of us.’

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Marco Magrini finds that a warming world also means a more unhealthy one, not just for the planet itself, but for those of us living on it

What’s bad for the planet is usually bad for human health. In other words, the current warming trends don’t spell good news for the well-being of our species... or for many others.

There are exceptions. Insects will thrive as the warmer temperatures increase their metabolic and reproductive rates, as well as their appetite. Not only will this encourage the spread of Zika, West Nile and Chikungunya viruses carried by mosquitoes, but also tick-borne Lyme disease which is already on the rise. According to a paper recently published in Science, insects in the future are expected to devour a much higher percentage of crops than they do at present - around five to 20 per cent.

Richer countries, long thought to be more resilient to climate change, have discovered this summer that they are not. In Japan, a heatwave killed dozens of people and hospitalised 22,000. Forests were burning in Sweden and an African record temperature was registered in Algeria at 51.3oC. In Seattle, Portland and Vancouver, the air was unbreathable for days as the three cities, which usually benefit from the pristine forests that surround them, were engulfed in smoke from British Columbia wildfires.

Air quality was even worse in Mumbai, Jakarta and Beijing, where coal combustion dims the light, clogs the lungs and further warms the atmosphere. According to the World Health Organization, humans’ dependency on fossil fuels leads to seven million people dying prematurely every year because of high pollution levels.

The ongoing recovery of the planet’s ozone layer is being significantly affected by volcanic eruptions

Thanks to the 1987 Montreal Protocol that banned the production of ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs), global efforts to prevent the depletion of the planet’s ozone layer have been surprisingly successful. Although a full recovery isn’t expected until the middle of the century, the ozone layer is now gradually replenishing, and the infamous ozone hole above Antarctica is slowly closing. However, new evidence underlines how the world’s volcanoes are hindering humanity’s efforts.

‘It’s important to recognise that volcanoes do not themselves destroy ozone, but rather enhance human-caused ozone loss,’ explains Catherine Wilka, from the Department of Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. When a volcano erupts, she explains, sulphuric acid particles are released. These cause chlorine in the stratosphere – such as that released by CFCs – to convert into a form where it is capable of destroying ozone.

Wilka and colleagues used climate model simulations to calculate the extent to which major volcanic eruptions have affected the ozone layer. The eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines in 1991 is a standout example from 1979-1998, when the ejected particles significantly escalated ozone depletion. From 1999 onwards, eruptions haven’t further harmed the layer but they have slowed its recovery. This indicates that it will be during periods of minimal volcanic activity that the Protocol will have the most impact in significantly repairing the ozone layer.

‘We had a particularly quiet period from the mid 1990s to about 2004, and have had a few moderate size eruptions since then,’ recalls Wilka. ‘When we calculate ozone recovery trends since 1998, the recovery is flatter than it would be if we’d had a volcanically active period in the early 2000s and a quiet period right now. That doesn’t mean the ozone layer isn’t recovering: it means that the recovery due to decreasing stratospheric chlorine will take longer to emerge from the natural variability. However, it’s important to stress that the ozone layer will continue to recover throughout the 21st century as long as we adhere to the Montreal Protocol, regardless of volcanic eruptions.’

This was published in the October 2018 edition of Geographical magazine

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One of the problems in getting accurate climate science out there, says Marco Magrini, is that there are far too many people unwilling to hear

The Politically Incorrect Guide to Climate Change, published this year in America, is an engrossing read. It is not a real guide, but it is politically inspired and largely incorrect. The book was written by Marc Morano, who served as the director of communications for Republican senator Jim Inhofe, the one who infamously tossed a snowball in the US Senate to ‘prove’ that climate change is a hoax. Under the same premise, Morano’s opus is devoted to demonstrating that any effort to rein in greenhouse gas emissions is an expensive joke, almost likely groundless, put together by a lunatic fringe of scientists and paranoid environmentalists. It is political because it endorses the latest White House vision on the role of science. In Morano’s opinion, just to give an idea, the Obama administration ‘ruthlessly politicised science.’

Now, it would be tedious (and beyond this column’s alloted word count) to report and disprove his many findings. What’s more instructing though, is to read the book’s reviews on Amazon, where so many readers applaud its rebuttal of climatic science while awarding it five stars. ‘The Earth isn’t boiling as the religion of warming would have us believe,’ writes one. ‘An extensive, well-written review of the global warming scam, later called climate change,’ says another. Or: ‘We are covered with fake science.’

The trouble with fake-fake news is that it is too often indistinguishable from any verifiable truth. Or, at least, it gets the same importance as more authoritative voices. If a few cases of malpractice have occurred within the climatology community, this doesn’t change the physical properties of certain gas molecules that we know (since the 19th century) to be trapping Earth’s infrared radiation.

What Morano and his fans just don’t get is the temporal lapse between today’s CO2 emissions and their carry-over effect in the distant future. The book openly mocks those who, every year in the last two decades – from the Prince of Wales to Al Gore – have claimed ‘it’s the last chance to save Earth’ while the world is still there. Yet it is true that many ‘last chances’ have passed by, for those Cassandras were not worried about an impending cataclysm but rather about a planet doomed to be inhabitable within a century or two.

This was published in the September 2018 edition of Geographical magazine

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Sharing the ideas of climate justice with a little humour and a lot of women

It’s an unlikely partnership, but in the fight against climate change, the pairing of the first female president of Ireland with a stand-up comedian could be just the answer the world needs. In a new six-part podcast series, Mothers of Invention, Mary Robinson and Maeve Higgins are introducing listeners to the ‘women who are working on the ground in the climate justice arena’. The aim, in Robinson’s own words, is to detail the ‘wonderfully feminist solutions’ to climate change that exist.

The ‘climate justice’ that Robinson and Higgins want to see has been part of Robinson’s agenda for much of her career. Formed of a set of principles that ‘link human rights and development to achieve a human-centred approach’, through her own foundation she aims to safeguard the rights of the most world’s most vulnerable people while ‘sharing the burdens and benefits of climate change and its impacts equitably and fairly’.

Initially setting out as a lawyer, Robinson had planned to campaign for human rights at the individual level. It was only following the chance to ‘do an awful lot for the women of Ireland’ in the role of president (coupled with the ‘Harvard Law School humility’ her husband attributes her decisions to) that made her agree to represent a larger group.

Her other roles have included UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, member of The Elders (a group of global leaders coordinating their actions for peace and human rights), and multiple positions as a UN Special Envoy. The Mothers of Invention podcast is just the latest attempt to encourage movement around climate justice.

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The motivation behind this new direction is summarised for Robinson in one woman’s story: Ursula Rakova. Due to rising sea levels, Robinson describes how Rakova is ‘moving people from the threatened Carteret Islands, to mainland Papua New Guinea... 1,500 people. She’s bought the land, brought them across in small groups and introduced them to their new neighbours in Papua New Guinea. It’s a work in progress.’ Deciding to leave their homes is not a decision Robinson ever had to encounter as president, and is not a choice she wants her six grandchildren to have to face either. To prevent this, ‘we need a movement pushing much harder,’ she says, ‘to avoid the 3ºC increase in world temperatures’ that Robinson knows would be ‘catastrophic’.

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Higgins motivation differs slightly. Her career as a comedian (and New York Times columnist) has been less focused on climate justice and more on eradicating the myths surrounding immigration. She’s certainly not new to podcasts. Maeve in America gives a platform for immigrants to share their anecdotal stories. Mothers of Invention is going to follow a similar vein – sharing the voices of ‘young women, of Black Lives Matter, of indigenous, but also women ministers’, opening listeners’ eyes to who is being impacted and how women are trying to change things.

One example is Tessa Khan. The Bangladeshi-Australian human rights lawyer is co-founder and co-director of the Climate Litigation Network, an organisation taking governments to court for not prioritising the environment. One of her latest cases involves Friends of the Irish Environment, which is suing the Irish government for having a ‘weak and unambitious’ climate policy. The case is expected to be heard in country’s High Court at the end of this year.

Mary Robinson and Maeve Higgins (Image: Ruth Medjber)

While stopping climate change would be the ideal goal, Robinson and Higgins are a little more realistic. Robinson wants to ‘get back that solidarity’ in which common goals become common action and international coordination. As well as action towards carbon-neutral development, she wants a shift in mindsets too. A positive and willing attitude are what she sees as necessary, both in the individual and international arena.

Higgins, also considering the potential impact of the podcast on individuals, wants to change the negativity often aligned with climate change. She admits that prior to starting the podcast, she ‘felt quite stuck and quite powerless’. She’s hoping that hearing how change can be enacted at the local level will alter the perception that top-down action isn’t the only method for real change.

Doc Society’s new podcast series MOTHERS OF INVENTION will broadcast new episodes from 24 July until 17 September. To listen to the trailer and subscribe, click here.

Well-meaning promises and actions don't always have the best outcomes. Marco Magrini finds that paradoxes abound despite the best intentions

Somebody is playing with the Montreal Protocol, the 1987 treaty that banned ozone-layer damaging chlorofluorocarbons. Scientists have revealed that atmospheric concentrations of CFC-11, one of the forbidden molecules, have inexplicably risen in recent times. Somebody, somewhere in Asia they say, has been cheating with the numbers.

In environmental and climatic matters, cheating is not unheard of. Industrial and financial corporations, as well as hackers and states, have often taken advantage of the Emissions Trading System, the European carbon market born after the Kyoto Protocol. In a couple of cases, scientists have been caught doctoring a few numbers, not to mention climate-denying lobbies that juggle fake data and misinformation all the time.

How easy is it to cheat on emissions? It’s a question that gets serious when we recall that the Paris Agreement on climate change is fundamentally based on trust. Countries have to voluntarily set emission reduction goals that are not legally binding and periodically report on them. Verification frameworks are to be established in the future but, needless to say, they will face hard times.

Tracking down the CFC-cheating culprits proved tricky, more so for possible CO2 fraudsters. Planet Earth, with its lands and oceans, is enormous. But just think of the sky. If we take the upper limits of the stratosphere (where CO2, CFC and ozone reside) we get 31 miles of continuous layers of gases, each one bigger than the Earth’s surface. There are no borders up there, neither customs nor controls. The molecules roaming around carry no passports. Carbon dioxide concentrations, which were around 280ppm (parts per million) before the Industrial Revolution, are now at 410ppm. It may sound trivial, but it makes a big climatic difference. The unforeseen increase in CFC-11 (which also happens to be a greenhouse gas) could be the cause of the recorded slowing in ozone layer recovery. They are both grave troubles.

Since the 1950s, all these emission data have been collected in Mauna Loa, Hawaii. Why? Because there’s no urban pollution there (volcanoes notwithstanding) and gassy molecules tend to spread all over the globe, so it is the perfect spot to take air samples. But that’s also why it is so hard to enforce environmental treaties. And why there will always be emission swindlers who keep on playing with our planet’s fragile equilibrium.

As climate conditions at the 100th meridian, the traditional United States boundary between the humid east and the dry west, are shown to be on the move, could it mean a reshaping of America’s farmlands?

In 1878, explorer John Wesley Powell travelled east to west across the US and noticed a change in the plants around him. Over a relatively small transect of land, prairie flowers gave way to drier shrubs, which in turn gave way to cacti. This gradual but strong transition, between the humid east and the dry west, extended in a straight line from north to south of the US, roughly following the 100th meridian. New research has now confirmed that this climate divide is gradually moving towards the east.

The divide can be seen from space, on Google Earth, and ‘is also plain to window seat passengers flying on airplanes across the continent’ say researchers from the the University of Columbia who have been looking into this territorial shift.

Though scientists largely agree that the climate divide along the 100th meridian exists, the Columbia study is the first to examine its causes. By looking at precipitation models, the team discovered the divide occurs for three reasons: the east is kept wetter by winter storms from the Atlantic and summer storms from the Gulf of Mexico that bend northeast. Meanwhile storms from the Pacific are wicked away by the Rocky Mountains, leaving the west dry.

The climate divide is readily visible on maps of the US

According to the findings, these dry conditions are moving eastwards. By analysing climate data from 1979 to 2015, the researchers found there had already been a noticeable trend eastwards of the arid climate, now putting the divide roughly at the 98th meridian. ‘There have also been contributions from declining precipitation but we think those might mostly be due to natural variability,’ says Richard Seager, lead author of the study. He believes it is rising temperatures that will increase evaporation and move the arid conditions further eastward. By linking these findings with climate change models, the team predicts that the easterly trend will continue to become more noticeable throughout the 21st century.

If the predictions become true, it could amount to big repercussions for land use along the 100th meridian. Already farming is largely dictated by the divide: moving west across it, farms become fewer and larger by land area, reflecting less available quantities of water. The majority of crops also change from moisture-loving corn, to plants that cope better with dry conditions, such as wheat. The researchers predict that these characteristics will need to be incorporated into the land around the 98th meridian in order to handle the warming conditions to come, potentially redrawing the agricultural maps of North and South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and Texas.

International shipping may be attempting to reduce its carbon footprint, but as Marco Magrini finds, it’ll take a lot more than good intentions

Ocean shipping is, if not the bread, at least the butter of globalisation. There are approximately 17 million shipping containers currently roaming the planet an estimated total of 200 million times a year. If we add tankers and other vessels to the count, it makes no wonder that maritime navigation produces three per cent of the world’s greenhouse-gas emissions, on a par with Germany and more than the entire United Kingdom.

Thankfully, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), a United Nations agency, recently agreed to ‘at least’ halve shipping emissions by 2050, compared to 2008 levels. It appears to be along the right lines, since countries such as the United States, Saudi Arabia and Panama were all against it.

However, it looks more like a failure if we consider the far more ambitious cuts prescribed by scientists and upheld by green activists. Or it may, in fact, look like a dream as the IMO forecasts that shipping could grow two and a half times by mid-century. Is it possible to halve emissions while they are doubling at the same time?

Yes, it is, provided there is an international agreement in place, an enduring political will and plenty of money to be spent. Still, if the IMO accord were to be followed to the letter, the ‘at least halving’ vow badly needs help from future technologies. ‘While liquid natural gas and biofuels will probably form a part of the interim solution,’ says Esben Poulsson, chairman of the International Chamber of Shipping, ‘these very high goals can only be achieved with the development of zero-carbon propulsion systems.’

The world’s shipping fleet has the obligation to switch to a cleaner fuel. The one in use now, known as bunker fuel, is essentially what’s left at the bottom of the barrel when everything else has been refined. It emits harmful sulphur and also black carbon, the worst of climate offenders (as it heats the atmosphere and reduces ice reflectivity at the same time).

Given available technologies, a fuel switch is the IMO’s low-hanging fruit, together with energy efficiency (slowing ships down by ten per cent produces enormous savings). Still, a lot of financial resources and human ingenuity are needed if zero-carbon propulsion systems are to be devised and deployed by mid-century. As globalisation appears destined to grow even more, you don’t want its lubricating butter to come from a sticky, dirty and planet-threatening bunker oil.

As the planet warms and tensions rise, Marco Magrini finds that the term ‘climate change’ can be interpreted in several different ways

Harvard professor Steven Pinker has argued that violence is on the decline. In his book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, he attributed such a statistically proven fact to, among other things, the growth of scientific knowledge and the diffusion of economic prosperity. But what if a changing atmosphere ends up... changing the atmosphere? What if a warming planet breaks a somewhat peaceful intermission in a violent human past?

Unfortunately, the case is not far-fetched. Droughts and conflict are already interrelated, as they left almost 124 million people in 51 countries facing acute food insecurity last year according to recent UN reports. Another study published in March by the World Bank, titled Groundswell: Preparing for Internal Climate Migration, holds that climate change will force tens of millions of people to migrate by 2050. Security experts maintain that hunger and migration are powerful enough forces to promote instability. Sea level rise, hurricanes and wildfires may add to the case.

If we cannot say that a hotter atmosphere directly generates conflicts, climate change is clearly a ‘threat multiplier’ (a term coined by Sherri Goodman, a senior fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington) as it accelerates security risks. Just think of water. ‘Water stress can empower violent extremist organisations and place stable governments at risk,’ reads another report from CNA, an American security think-tank populated with retired generals and admirals.

Sure, the Pentagon has long been worried about the geopolitical implications of a changing climate. ‘The Arctic is warming faster than the rest of the planet,’ US Navy admiral and oceanographer David Titley told me ten years ago, ‘and the Bering Strait will be as strategically vital as the Strait of Hormuz,’ where Saudi oil navigates. But something has changed. Just a month after expressing concern that 128 military bases in the US could be threatened by three feet of sea level rise, the Pentagon has scrapped climate change from its latest defence strategy. While so many papers point to the dangers of converging climate and war, the world’s biggest military magically erased the dilemma from its papers.

Needless to say, we enthusiastically root for the better angels of our nature, especially among the human generations to come. Provided they find themselves in the worldly paradise we all know, and not in a scorching hell.

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]]>ClimateSat, 12 May 2018 04:52:14 +0100Feeling the heat in the Arctichttp://geographical.co.uk/nature/climate/item/2648-feeling-the-heat-in-the-arctic
http://geographical.co.uk/nature/climate/item/2648-feeling-the-heat-in-the-arctic

Why is Europe so cold right now? Marco Magrini suggests looking north, to an exceptionally warm Arctic, for some answers

Human beings tend to be not too far-sighted, especially when talking about the weather. After months of prolonged droughts (as happened last year in several areas of continental Europe) we began accepting that climate change is happening. After a few days of polar temperatures (as in the severe perturbation now gripping Europe to its southernmost tips) some have started to nurture doubts.

We should look northwards. While merry pictures of a snow-blanketed Vatican City were being broadcasted on every TV on the planet, an ominous thermometer reading was making every climatologist’s blood run cold. A few days ago, at Cape Morris Jesup, the northernmost land outpost in Greenland, the temperature reached 6° Celsius – without a minus sign – and saw a record-breaking 61 hours above freezing.

At the top of the world, there is no doubt left – climate change is palpably happening. Arctic sea ice is at its lowest level on record. During summer, cruise ships can sail unharmed through the famed Northwestern Passage. Greenland is melting at a much faster pace than previously thought. The Big North is warming twice as fast as anywhere else on the planet.

If climatologists have been tweeting messages of disbelief after the Cape Morris Jesup record temperatures, it is because they have a secret fear – that the Arctic’s fever could potentially trigger a non-linear response in the Greenhouse effect one indefinite day. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world has witnessed a linear and parallel increase in CO2 concentrations and mean ground temperatures. Yet it is thought that, above a certain warming threshold, a series of positive feedbacks could destabilise the atmospheric system. They call it ‘runaway climate change’. It is precisely what nobody, including deniers, would ever like to see.

Now, the public do not like to hear about catastrophic climate change – it is not an appropriate subject for a primetime TV show. But what the public do not grasp well is the difference between short-term local meteorology and long-term world climatology. In a nutshell, when talking about the climate, we should far-sightedly look at the whole planet, and on a decadal pace.

Wait, the warm temperatures at Cape Morris Jesup were a local and brief event, thus belonging to meteorology, weren’t they? This is true. However, they also fit into a bigger, scarier picture of climatic irreversibility.

Last year, the sea ice cover had declined so much that NOAA declared in its annual Arctic Report Card that the Arctic would ‘likely never again return to its reliably frozen’ status of the past. With less ice afloat, warm air from the South can penetrate further than it ever did before and drive additional melting. This is a perfect example of a positive feedback – less sea ice cover leads to thinned glaciers.

All that reduced ice cover (both off- and in-land) means a change in colour, thus in the Arctic’s reflectivity of solar radiation, also known as albedo. The lower the albedo, the more heat is retained, which induces more melting. Or, add the freshwater constantly dripping from glaciers over the ocean, thus reducing its salinity and potentially disrupting the unseen marvels of our planetary equilibrium, such as the Gulf Stream that brings warm water from Mexico to Northern Europe. Or, consider the prospect of methane being released from melting permafrost, further accelerating that systematic cycle of warming – another positive feedback loop.

To be more far-sighted, we may just have to look northwards.

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Harmful ozone levels found at the Earth’s surface, or troposphere, continue to be a cause for concern across the world

New research led by the Universities of Leicester and Edinburgh, in cooperation with 12 other institutions worldwide, has analysed ozone levels across the globe, and shows that those harmful to human health are dropping in Europe and North America but rising in other regions, particularly East Asia.

‘Despite some improvements in air pollution emissions in Europe and North America, human health impacts from ozone are still a cause for concern across the world and are rising in East Asia,’ says Dr Zoë Fleming, from the National Centre for Atmospheric Science (NCAS) at the University of Leicester’s Department of Chemistry.

Fleming went on to suggest that these findings shine a light on, ‘the potential for serious health consequences on their populations.’

As opposed to the stratospheric ozone layer that absorbs much of the Sun’s dangerous ultraviolet radiation, surface tropospheric ozone is a greenhouse gas and pollutant, potentially damaging to human health as well as to crops and ecosystem productivity.

The results of this new study, published in the scientific journal Elementa: Science of the Anthropocene, have attempted to map this harmful tropospheric ozone by providing the most comprehensive ground-level assessment ever, using data from over 4,800 monitoring stations across the globe.

Fleming is also keen to emphasise the scale and implications of the project. ‘The Tropospheric Ozone Assessment Report (TOAR) is the most ambitious project to date to assess global ozone levels at the surface of the Earth, helping us to better understand potential human health impacts,’ she says.

Studying ozone

According to the new study, since 1990 a large portion of emissions from human activity that contribute to surface ozone have shifted from North America and Europe to Asia. This relatively rapid change, combined with limited data from developing nations and remote regions of the world, meant the scientific community was left struggling to keep up with the evolving map of tropospheric ozone.

To attempt to redress this, the International Global Atmospheric Chemistry Project (IGAC) started TOAR in 2014, the aim being to provide the research community with up-to-date scientific assessments of global distribution and trends.

The huge project combined data from thousands of measurement sites around the world with global metadata information, allowing for new analyses of surface ozone, such as the first consistent characterisations of measurement sites as either urban or rural. Using global metadata has also provided insights into the distribution, and seasonal and long-term changes of tropospheric ozone.

But perhaps TOAR’s crowning acheivement was combining all this information into a freely accessible database, for research on the global impact of ozone on climate, human health, crop damage and ecosystem productivity.

In order to make any conclusions on global trends, collaboration accross borders was essential to such an ambitious research project.

‘TOAR was made possible by an international team of scientists who volunteered their time and expertise to build the world’s largest database of ozone metrics and then make those data completely open access,’ explains Dr Owen Cooper, from the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at University of Colorado in the US.

Along with Colorado, other contributors were: the Universities of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, and Maryland as well as ASL and associates in the US; the Stockholm Environment institute in the UK; INERIS in France; the Chinese Academy of Meteorological Sciences and Chinese Academy of Science in China; NILU (Norwegian Institute for Air Research) and the Norwegian Meteorological Institute; Chalmers University in Sweden; the University of Witwatersrand in South Africa; and the Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies (IASS) and Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany.

The international reach allowed for a larger number of measurement sites, creating what the study claims is a far more comprehensive dataset.

Figure 2. Trends in daily maximum ozone levels at urban and non-urban sites. The steepness of the arrows up or down illustrates the size of the trend, with blue being a decrease and red, an increase. (Image: University of Leicester)

optimism in the air

Monitoring the quality of the planet’s air is a crucial element for quantifying current air pollution levels and evaluating the effectiveness of emissions controls, which in turn informs the evolution of air pollution policy.

‘The ability to quantify for urban regions worldwide the changes in high and peak ozone levels over the last 15 years and longer is an exciting research development,’ said Professor Ruth Doherty, from the School of Geosciences at University of Edinburgh. ‘We hope it will be useful to air quality managers to inform and evaluate strategies to protect human health from the adverse effects of ozone.’

The potential benefits of the study aside, there are still large regions of the world where such monitoring is sparse or non-existent and the study is at pains to point out that to effectively understand and tackle air pollution, expanded monitoring is critical. But the database created by TOAR should provide a valuable resource for future global research, as well as highlight the dangers of tropospheric ozone.

‘There is an increasing awareness of the issues of human health from poor air quality,’ says Fleming. ‘Making such a database freely available and disseminating the results from the study will inform the public on the health implications of ozone.’

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Those concerned with external asylum applications to the EU might want to focus on reducing the impacts of climate change

The first 14 years of this century saw an average of 351,000 asylum applications to the EU annually, a challenge to which the bloc has struggled to produce a unified collective response. Instead, walls have risen around countries such as Hungary, democratic backlashes have been unleashed across the continent, and the border-free Schengen Agreement has wobbled, as even close neighbours such as Denmark and Sweden have witnessed the reinstatement of passport checks.

A new set of data is now showing that, to head off significant future increases in application numbers, the European community might have to start looking at ways to limit the worst global impacts of climate change, especially in countries with extreme climates such as Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, where significant numbers of current asylum seekers emanate.

By the end of the century, the EU could be receiving anything from 98,000 additional asylum applications per year (if global temperatures rise by a conservative 1.1°C to 2.6°C, relative to a 1976-2005 baseline) to a potential 660,000 additional applications per year under a more extreme 2.6°C to 4.8°C rise – a tripling of current average numbers.

This is in response to new research which shows how, the more atmospheric temperatures move away from 20°C (broadly the optimum for growing crops such as maize) and towards the extremes of hot or cold, the more likely people are to abandon agriculture, and instead seek shelter elsewhere. Given the ongoing trend for the planet’s thermometer to be inching ever upwards, this primarily means heading towards the cooler north, such as to the EU, where climate impacts are forecast to be less severe (a few countries, such as Serbia, have also seen asylum applications rise in conjunction with especially cold weather).

‘Europe is already conflicted about how many refugees to admit,’ reflects Wolfram Schlenker, professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. ‘Though poorer countries in hotter regions are most vulnerable to climate change, our findings highlight the extent to which countries are interlinked, and Europe will see increasing numbers of desperate people fleeing their home countries.’

This latest research follows a high profile study in 2015, also from Columbia University, that found a strong connection between climate change-induced drought across Syria from 2007 to 2010 – leading to crop failure and mass migration – and the civil unrest which followed in 2011, plunging the country into years of conflict and significantly destabilising the region.

This was published in the February 2018 edition of Geographical magazine.

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The ocean floor is being deformed under the weight of ever-increasing water from melting ice and redistribution of land water. This unexpected consequence of climate change also appears to be skewing global sea level data making it appear less severe

Combining data on mass loss from the Greenland and Antarctica ice sheets, and changes in water storage on land surfaces (due to dam, reservoirs and irrigation), they were able to feed this information into mathematical equations that could calculate sea level estimates around the globe.

‘I was quite surprised by the outcomes,’ says Thomas Frederikse who authored the study. ‘Over the last 20 years the oceans have become ~2.5 mm deeper. It was already assumed that bottom deformation was small, compared to sea-level rise on a global scale. However, we show that for some regions, especially the Arctic and Southern oceans, its size is considerable.’

Changes in a) the seafloor, b) relative sea level taking into account sea floor deformation, and c) ‘geocentric’ sea level as measured by satellites (not taking into account sea floor deformation). Note in the second graph how sea level change relative to the seafloor is negative for the Arctic, as the sea floor has risen due to mass loss from melting ice. (Image: Frederikse et al. 2017)

Sea level rise is caused primarily by two factors related to global warming: the added water from melting ice sheets and glaciers, and the expansion of sea water as it warms. This rise has long been documented, but what these new findings mean is that the global sea level rise is actually higher than previously thought.

The existing numbers were based on satellite data which measured surface level relative to the centre of the Earth, assuming the ocean floor as basically a fixed constant depth. Now this assumption has been proved to be wrong, the significance being that even more water from melting ice has reentered the oceans than was thought, thanks to climate change and human activity.

Perhaps almost as telling of the state of wilful ignorance to climate change and its consequences, is that the unexpected phenomena of our swelling oceans actually contracting the Earth has been known by scientists for some time, it is simply a lesser documented and less visible symptom of climate change.

The team of researchers from Delft have managed to quantify this extreme effect, finding that the increase in weight of the oceans has caused the sea floor to sink by about 0.1 mm/year between 1993-2014, or 2.5 mm over the entire period, and this is a trend that will only worsen with time.

‘It is widely accepted that, when greenhouse gas emissions won’t be cut, the ice sheets will retreat at a much faster pace than today, and then, due to the massive increase in ocean mass, seafloor deformation will become significant,’ says Frederikse.

Red lines show the ‘relative’ sea level change taking into account changes in the seafloor, blue lines show previous ‘geocentric’ estimates at sea level change. Solid lines are average recordings and the dashed lines are tide gauge recordings. The ‘altimetry’ area consists of the global oceans, bounded by ±66º latitude. Note the red lines appear higher in all regions except the Arctic and North Atlantic, which suffer the most ice mass loss, and thus where the sea floor has risen rather than sunk. (Image: Frederikse et al. 2017)

The research also revealed some other unexpected consequences, as some areas of the sea floor are forced down, others rise. ‘On regional scales, the effect was certainly larger than expected: in the Arctic, which becomes less and less heavy due to mass loss in Greenland and many glaciers, the ocean floor rises at about 1 mm/y,’ explains Frederikse.

These incremental seafloor changes might not seem all that problematic from land, but for scientists documenting the rate of melting ice and sea level change they are more than simply numbers and maths equations, they signal once again the need for action on climate change.

For Frederikse, this is one of the most important implication of the study. ‘I’m fascinated by the fact that due to our behaviour, we do not only change the Earth’s thermostat, we’re literally deforming our own planet. Fascinating, but very worrisome,’ he says.

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Progress on halting warming has not been great throughout 2017. For Marco Magrini, 2018 cannot be more of the same

As it begins a new orbit around the Sun, Planet Earth has entered into another uncharted future. Climatologists anticipate a year of new record temperatures, scientists envision further advances in clean energy technologies, and green activists fear that governments’ actions will again fall short of what is needed to rein in the predictable atmospheric change. Meanwhile meteorologists, who by definition look at a short-term future, can’t help but prepare themselves for yet another step-up in weather unpredictability.

The 2018 climate change calendar does not fall short of interesting events, such as the grandiose ‘Cities and Climate Change Science Conference’ to be held in March in Edmonton, Canada, the world capital of climate-enemy tar sands. Not to mention the yearly UN Summit on climate change, which will be staged in November in Katowice, Poland, the European capital of dirty coal. Add a few hundred international and regional conferences and it’s clear the climatic debate will not run out of words. Action is the problem. Preliminary data suggest that global CO2 emissions in 2017 grew by around two per cent after being relatively flat for three years. This is not the expected trajectory for a world aiming at containing the mean temperature rise under the dangerous threshold of 2°C.

Why is it so risky? Because it can trigger non-linear changes in the atmospheric system. Since the Industrial Revolution we have witnessed a linear (and somewhat parallel) increase in CO2 concentrations and mean temperatures. Above a certain warming level, methane under thawing permafrost and warmer oceans may seep out and induce a non-linear acceleration towards bigger troubles. Nobody knows for certain if 2°C is that threshold. But would you bet a planet on it? The Precautionary Principle, successfully implemented by the UN with the ozone layer-saving Montreal Protocol, affirms the need to protect human life from harm when scientific investigation has found a plausible risk such as the 2°C warming. The future of climate change depends on a more widespread and passionate desire for precaution. We need to act before it is too late. Now would be the right time to begin.

This was published in the January 2018 edition of Geographical magazine.

According to a report by independent consultancy Eunomia, which compiled recycling rate figures from around the world by looking at waste management policy, legislation and collection services, Wales places just behind Germany when it comes to recycling.

Eunomia suggests those countries that performed well had a number of common features. Comprehensive schemes to enable people to recycle, clear performance targets and policy objectives, funding for recycling, extended producer responsibility schemes, and financial and behavioural incentives to encourage citizens to recycle.

According to the Welsh government, which rated highly in all these categories, ‘if everyone lived the way we do in Wales, we would need nearly three planets to provide the resources needed. This is no longer an option for Wales, so we must reduce our waste.’

This thinking has encouraged the country to set tough recycling targets.

“We want to see a continued growth through an ongoing programme of engaging, inspiring and informative campaigning”

In August, Wales met a target for 64 per cent of waste to be recycled by 2019-20, the target for 2016-17 was 58 per cent.

‘The campaign aims to encourage consumers to recycle more things more often from all around the home’ said Recycle for Wales, the national recycling campaign supported and funded by the Welsh government. ‘Wales currently boasts the highest recycling rates in the UK and we want to see a continued growth through an ongoing programme of engaging, inspiring and informative campaigning.’

The Welsh government also set the ambitious target of aiming for no waste at all ending up in landfill by 2050, and considering the way the country is currently progressing, this seems more realistic by the day.

In fact, based on the trajectory of the reported recycling rates, Eunomia predicts that ‘Wales could overtake Germany as early as 2018.’

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A series of worrying reports by the Global Carbon Project has revealed that after three years of flat growth, global fossil fuel emissions are once again on the rise

2017 saw a growth in emissions of two per cent from 2016 levels, and indications are this trend will continue. According to the reports, ‘economic projections suggest further emissions growth in 2018 is likely. Time is running out on our ability to keep global average temperature increases below 2°C.’

Carbon dioxide (CO2) concentrations in the atmosphere have increased from approximately 277 parts per million at the begininng of the industrial era to 403 parts per million in 2016. This increase was largely down to deforestation and land-use change until about 1920, then the mass burning of fossil fuels became the dominant source of carbon emissions.

Increased emissions

Emissions from fossil fuels and industry make up about 90 per cent of all CO2 emissions from human activities. For the last three years, these emissions were stable, despite continuing growth in the global economy. This is unusual as the two are normally inextricable linked, making the years between 2014 and 2016 stand out as emissions barely budged.

The Global Carbon Project reports explain how many positive trends contributed to this ‘unique hiatus’, including reduced coal use in China and elsewhere, continuing gains in energy efficiency, and a boom in renewable energy such as wind and solar.

However, this temporary hiatus appears now to be the exception that proves the rule, as 2017’s data shows a return to increasing CO2 levels, and a return to more coal burning in China.

Primary producers

Despite a recent policy shift towards greener thinking, the reports site China as leading the increase, where emissions are projected to grow by approximately 3.5 per cent in 2017. Coal use is up an estimated three per cent, oil use is up five per cent and natural gas use is up nearly 12 per cent.

‘Mostly it is the renewed growth in emissions in China, boosted by economic interventions from the Chinese government,’ says Corinne Le Quere, a professor of climate change science and policy at the University of East Anglia and director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. But, she also suggests it’s not entirely down to China. ‘The decreases in emissions in the US and EU are also expected to be weaker this year compared to the past ten years,’ she says.

Graph from Environmental Research Letters shows CO2 emissions from fossil fuel use and industry since 1960, for China, the United States, the European Union, India, and the rest of the world (ROW), with open symbols representing projections for 2017

Reasons for optimism

The Global Carbon Project, the group that produced the worrying reports, was started to assist the international science community in establishing a ‘mutually agreed knowledge base’, supporting policy debate and action in slowing the rate of greenhouse gases.

Professor Rob Jackson, who chairs the research group, believes despite these new findings there is still reason for optimism. ‘This year’s result is discouraging, but I remain hopeful,’ he said. Jackson is also the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Provostial Professor at Stanford’s School of Earth, Energy & Environmental Sciences. ‘Prices for wind and solar power are plummeting, and batteries and storage are helping to balance supply and demand for electricity. The world’s energy future is changing before our eyes.’

“Prices for wind and solar power are plummeting, and batteries and storage are helping to balance supply and demand for electricity. The world’s energy future is changing before our eyes”

Professor Le Quere suggests the way forward for CO2 reduction might involve new technology: ‘There is a big opportunity and uncertainty associated with the imminent revolution in transport. This is both how electric vehicles will penetrate the markets and how transport itself may transform from a vehicle ownership to a service, with driverless-vehicles offering a range of new opportunities. At the moment it is very unclear if those changes will increase or decrease the emissions. There is a tremendous opportunity for emissions reductions if managed properly.’

However, as things stand, the road to reducing CO2 emissions is sure to be a long one. As Le Quere point out, ‘the decline in coal use needs to continue globally, and that hinges on policies in China and the US mainly. The decarbonisation efforts also need to start tackling oil and gas, both of which have grown unabated in the past decade and more.’

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Sixty-two of the natural World Heritage Sites are now at risk from the impact of climate change, a number which has nearly doubled in just three years

If we need evidence of the growing impact humans are having on the environment, look no further than the 241 UNESCO Natural (or mixed Cultural and Natural) World Heritage Sites, those sites of outstanding universal value containing ‘areas of exceptional natural beauty and aesthetic importance’, ‘outstanding examples representing major stages of earth's history’, ‘outstanding examples representing significant on-going ecological and biological processes’, or containing ‘the most important and significant natural habitats for in-situ conservation of biological diversity’. In 2014, the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) signalled that thirty-five of these sites were threatened by climate change. Just three years later, this number has rapidly escalated, with at least sixty-two now indicated to be at risk.

Predictably, coral reefs feature especially severely, with Australia's Great Barrier Reef, the Seychelles' Aldabra Atoll, and the Belize Barrier Reef all classified as having a ‘very high’ threat rating. Oceania, Central America, and the Caribbean are the regions of the world with the most climate change-threatened World Heritage Sites, but the list also includes European sites such as the Pyrenees and the Wadden Sea, as well as everything from the Canadian Rocky Mountain Parks and the Everglades National Park, to Kilimanjaro National Park and the Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu.

Everglades National Park, Florida, USA (Image: pisaphotography)

‘Today we see that climate change is already causing significant impacts on different types of ecosystems and natural features contained in these sites, from coral reefs and coastal areas to glaciers and fire-prone grasslands,’ reflects Peter Shadie, Senior Adviser at the IUCN’s World Heritage Programme. ‘It results in a range of impacts and consequences, including coral bleaching, sea-level rise, increasing frequency and severity of fires. There appear to be a multitude of factors causing the rapid increase in sites affected, including new studies documenting the tangible impacts attributable to climate change and the prevalence of invasive species impacts, as the number one threat to sites and often driven by changes in climate.’

The Historic Sanctuary of Machu Picchu, Peru (Image: saiko3p)

Overall, the IUCN conclude that invasive species, mass tourism, and climate change are currently the biggest threats to all 241 natural sites. However, while the former are not threatening significantly more sites than they were three years ago, the immense scale of the latter means it is rapidly closing in on becoming the most substantial threat. ‘Because of its global nature,’ adds Shadie, ‘climate change affects sites in countries all over the world. While no country can address climate change on its own, investment in adaptation measures and effective management is important. These measures can help reduce negative impacts and help sites adapt better.’

Water, water may be everywhere, but as Marco Magrini discovers, it’s not stopping vast swathes of the planet suffering from ever-increasing drought conditions

As 2017 is coming to an end, you may be tempted to call it Year of the Hurricanes. However, a slower and more silent phenomenon could be better awarded with such a title. On the other side of the deluge coin, there is drought.

After a three-year-long dry spell, flames devoured more than a million acres in California, while some of Europe’s most parched spots, particularly in Portugal, were reduced to ash. Seventeen African countries, from Angola to Tanzania, from Sudan to Malawi, have endured the second consecutive year of drought. Israel is in its fourth, and the arid conditions are crippling its high-tech agriculture.

Repeated droughts are destroying enough farm produce to feed 81 million people, said the World Bank in a recent report, aptly named Uncharted Waters. ‘The 21st century is witnessing the collision of two powerful trends – rising human populations coupled with a changing climate,’ the financial institution argues. It’s no small matter, as the collision could be brutal.

Slightly more than 70 per cent of our planet is covered with water. Yet, 97 per cent of it is salted. Most of the meagre three per cent of freshwater is locked in glaciers. The remaining slice (0.5 per cent) is mostly composed by underground aquifers (equivalent to four trillion Olympic-sized swimming pools), followed by rainfall (47 billion pools), lakes (36 billion), man-made reservoirs (two billion) and rivers (848 million pools). In other words, on a planet awash with water, the water at mankind’s disposal is just a tiny fraction of the total. Meanwhile, mankind has grown to pass the 7.5 billion population mark.

Rain scarcity, the World Bank estimates, is four times more costly than floods. Not to mention its long-term consequences, like cropland expansion into forested areas. Climate change may accelerate this pattern, ‘leading to a harmful cycle where rainfall shocks induce deforestation, thereby increasing carbon dioxide emissions, and, in turn, further exacerbating rainfall extremes.’

Those extremes – downpours and droughts – were predicted by climatologists decades ago. The prediction includes an escalation in weather pattern disruptions, well similar to the ones we have witnessed in 2017. ‘How much worse can it get?’ is the question.

This was published in the December 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

The discovery of increasing levels of ozone-depleting compounds being emitted into the atmosphere puts pressure on the need to expand the Montreal Protocol

Despite the high-profile banning of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) by the Montreal Protocol 30 years ago, the conveyer-belt of ozone-depleting chlorine compounds being emitted into the atmosphere continues to whirr. The latest to be added to the list include dichloromethane, used in paint stripping, agricultural fumigation and, in the manufacturing process of various pharmaceuticals and 1,2-dichloroethan, used in the production of PVC.

Emissions of these chemicals steadily decreased during the 1990s and early 2000s, as they gradually faded from manufacturing in Europe and North America. The past decade, however has seen a gradual and significant rise in their atmospheric presence. Given the nature of 21st century manufacturing, China has now become the largest emitter of these compounds, alongside other Asian nations with growing, manufacturing-heavy economies.

Unfortunately, it’s also a particularly damaging part of the world for such compounds to be released. Due to a geographical quirk, a pattern of cold surges capable of quickly transporting industrial pollutants south from Asia has resulted in large quantities of these compounds being found at very high altitudes in the tropics, enabling them to be potentially transferred into the stratosphere, where ozone depletion can occur.

‘These chemicals have lifetimes of three or four months in the atmosphere,’ explains David Oram, from the University of East Anglia. ‘If you release something with an atmospheric lifetime of, say, four months at 50 or 60-degrees north, by the time it gets down to the tropics – particularly to these regions of the tropics where the majority of stratospheric exchange takes place – because of their short lifetimes, a lot of it will have reacted away, broken down lower in the atmosphere before they get the chance to get into the stratosphere.’ Therefore, despite general awareness of these compounds for decades, it has always been anticipated that they would contribute only a small amount of chlorine to the stratosphere.

This new rise of emissions, however, is seeing a far faster process at work, making the short lifespan less significant. ‘They’re transported very quickly into the tropics as part of the winter monsoon mechanism,’ says Oram. ‘Once they’re in that Western Pacific-South China Sea region, that’s where you get some very strong convection. It’s one of the regions on Earth where you get material going into the stratosphere regularly.’

At the 23rd Convention of the Parties (COP) climate change conference in Bonn, taking place 6-17 November, a sub-group of concerned US policy makers and politicians are currently challenging their President’s inaction

The annual COP meetings have been gathering both urgency and direction in the last two years. At the landmark Paris Agreement in 2015, all world nations (besides Syria and Nicaragua) agreed to aim to keep global temperature rise this century well below 2°C (compared to pre-industrial levels).

On 1 June this year, however, President Trump reneged on the US’s commitments made during the Obama administration, declaring ‘we’re getting out’. Syria and Nicaragua have both since promised to sign up. As a result, the beleaguered official US delegation at COP23, derided for their awkward advocacy of ‘clean coal’, arrived at the convention looking isolated and backward.

Step in UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change – Michael Bloomberg. Alongside Californian governor Jerry Brown, the two men formed the ‘We Are Still In’ declaration last June following Trump’s announcement. The goal was to ensure that American states, cities and business are not left behind, and to demonstrate that the US continues to be a world leader on climate change by adhering to the requirements of the Paris Agreement.

As non-state actors, Bloomberg and Brown were unable to represent US interests in an official capacity at Bonn. But multi-billionaire Bloomberg is a man who knows how to host a party. At the privately-funded Climate Action Pavilion on the outskirts of COP23, he and Brown launched ‘America’s Pledge’ this Saturday to a packed and expectant crowd. While inaction continues on a Federal level in the US, Bloomberg and Brown’s goal before 2025 is to reduce US economy-wide emissions by 26 per cent to 28 per cent compared to 2005 levels.

Networks supporting the Paris Agreement across the US (Source: America’s Pledge)

Why America’s Pledge matters

For logistical reasons, COP23 is being held in Bonn, Germany. The actual ‘host’ nation in 2017, however, is Fiji – a country severely affected by sea level rise, the increased intensity of cyclones and warmer temperatures associated with climate change.

In his welcoming remarks, the Fijian prime minister and incoming COP president Frank Bainimarama embraced the presence of the US sub-delegation stating that, ‘without the non-state actors, we will fall short of the objectives set by the parties.’ Perhaps referring to the rift that President Trump created by abandoning the Paris Agreement, he referred to Talanoa – the word in many Pacific languages for ‘honest constructive dialogue.’ He invited all parties to embrace it during the convention, adding, ‘the Talanoa spirit is not just about being nice to everyone; although respect is essential.’

Since June this year, Bloomberg and Brown have been in dialogue with businesses, tribes, city mayors, universities and states across the US. They now have more than 2,500 signatories for the We Are Still In declaration. The America’s Pledge Phase 1 Report, released to coincide with COP23, details how Bloomberg and Brown now plan to wield their signatories’ power to tackle climate change, and act beyond the auspices of the Federal government.

And power they have. China and the United States are the only two countries whose GDP is higher than the support Bloomberg and Brown have already garnered from combined US non-state actors since June. When they took to the stage this Saturday morning in Bonn, it is no surprise that many of the 197 Parties of the Paris Framework were present and listening.

GDPs of countries and US States supporting Paris Agreement (Source: America’s Pledge)

What does America’s Pledge offer?

In the Climate Action Pavilion, Bloomberg said of renewable energy that, ‘thanks to the falling price of coal and solar, coal no longer makes any economic sense.’ Innovation in vehicle batteries and solar energy generation is credited in the America’s Pledge report with reducing their respective cost since 2010 by 80 per cent.

‘The false promise of jobs coming back in coal,’ he went on say, ‘is a sad fraud on miners who need help to transition to a new economy so they and their families can have a future, rather than being a pawn in a political reality show.’

Earlier in proceedings at the pavilion, the powerful We Are Still In signatory member Walmart had been invited to showcase. Laura Phillips, the retail giant’s senior vice president of sustainability, said that in the last ten years ‘investments in renewables have saved [Walmart] a lot of money.’ Besides strengthening business goals, Phillips explained that the $210billion-multinational has found that by installing onsite solar energy and investing in the climate ‘it is also good for our communities.’

“The false promise of jobs coming back in coal is a sad fraud on miners who need help to transition to a new economy”

Governor Jerry Brown spoke to the incremental ‘ratchet mechanism’ built into America’s Pledge and the wider Paris Agreement. Full implementation of the current Paris Agreement would still be estimated to cause warming between an extremely dangerous 2.8°C, and a catastrophic 4.5°C.

‘Is it enough? No!’ Brown said about America’s Pledge. ‘We are not at the point where we are reducing emissions globally, and we have to do a lot more.’

This first report corroborates the opportunities for deeper emission reductions by US states, cities and businesses. These will be analysed further in the more comprehensive Phase 2 Report in 2018.

Michael Bloomberg and Frank Bainimarama (Image: UNFCCC)

Does America’s Pledge go far enough?

Not everyone at the Climate Action Pavilion thought that America’s Pledge had filled the void left by Trump’s rejection of the Paris Agreement. Brown was heckled repeatedly during his speech by protestors, including Native American groups, over continued fracking in California.

Patricia Espinosa, executive secretary of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, struck a conciliatory note at the end of proceedings. Her presence, alongside COP president Bainimarama, was an affirmation of the work America’s Pledge has already done. She concluded by applauding its efforts and reaffirming that ‘the climate change agenda can not be delivered by governments alone.’

“The world is on the road to hell, unless we make a radical turn towards a more sustainable path”

On Monday 13 November, Brown reappeared emboldened and even more brazen to say, ‘the world is on the road to hell, unless we make a radical turn towards a more enlightened, sustainable path.’ A report published overnight, the Global Carbon Budget, has shown that after five years of slowing or no growth in CO2 emissions, projections for global emissions in 2017 predict a renewed increase of two per cent.

Brown has also announced a ‘Global Climate Action Summit’ for September 2018 in San Francisco. Meanwhile, Bloomberg poured scorn on the disastrous pro-fossil fuel groups sent out to bat by the official US delegation in the afternoon – calling their advocacy of coal at a climate summit, ‘like promoting tobacco at a cancer summit.’

At COP23 there are two very different American delegations, with very different ideologies, motivations and agendas. Yet in spite of how far the two US delegations seem to be drifting, common ground and honest dialogue must soon be found in the global effort to confront climate change. After all, in the rather refreshing words of Bainimarama, ‘we are all in the same canoe.’

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Marco Magrini considers why the recent devastation caused by hurricanes in the Caribbean might be causing Paris pull-outs to rethink their stance

Last May, cyclone Mora killed six people in Bangladesh and displaced 500,000 more. Then came hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria, which devastated the Caribbean and seriously impacted Texas and Florida. These natural disasters prompted the Central American country of Nicaragua, albeit totally unscathed, to reconsider its position within the Paris Agreement. The government of Managua didn’t sign the 2015 climate change treaty for the parochial reason that ‘why would small emitters worry about a problem they haven’t caused?’

It joined only Syria and the Holy See as being non-signatory nations, the former because of its ongoing civil war, the latter only due to it not yet being a full member of the UNFCCC (something it has stated it is working on becoming, specifically in order to sign the agreement). Now Nicaragua has changed its mind in order ‘to demonstrate solidarity’ with countries affected by hurricanes and cyclones of such ferocity.

Rumour has it that Donald Trump may also be reconsidering his stance of pulling the United States out of the agreement, signed by the country during a more far-sighted presidency. Menwhile, White House officials repeat that America just needs to revise the treaty ‘on more favourable terms’. Curiously, though, the Paris Agreement prescribes emission reductions on a voluntary basis and doesn’t sanction those who miss their targets. How can you get a better deal?

Continuing to doubt climate change in 2017 and seeming to get away with being being grilled on such a stance, is even more bizarre than Trump’s incoherent requests. Thankfully Nicaragua, at least, has realised enough is enough. What awful natural disaster will it take to get the few remaining doubters to come to their senses?

Atlantic hurricanes get much more airtime than Pacific cyclones, but the latter’s recent abnormal intensity is also linked to the same warmer waters. There is also little ongoing TV coverage of the melting glaciers and the disappearing permafrost in the Big North, where the rise in temperature is double the world’s average. We might be vaguely aware of such threats but the general public seems yet to grasp the urgency.

‘I’m terribly afraid that we will need some natural disaster on a grandiose scale to get full support for the proper climate policies,’ an eminent climatologist told me during a round of UN climate talks. ‘But that could happen too late’, he added.

Puerto Rico may be a tiny island, but the devastation it suffered was certainly grandiose. And the melting rate in Greenland is also grandiose - just in somewhere remote that doesn’t grab headlines. But we DO know it is happening, and, it is (probably) not too late to act.

This was published in the November 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

Geographical’s regular look at the world of climate change. This month, Marco Magrini looks at carbon capture and storage options

Let’s tell the blunt truth: the world’s climate goals are simply not attainable. Keeping global warming below the fabled 2°C mark is remarkably wishful thinking. True, growth in fossil fuel emissions has stalled over the past three years. In the same time frame though, the atmosphere has witnessed the addition of another 110 billion tons of CO2. It’s time to start making subtractions.

Carbon capture and storage technology has long been a favourite refrain for politicians and polluters daydreaming of retrofitted smokestacks capable of making coal magically ‘clean’. After much initial fanfare, investors have since retreated and governments (Britain included) have scrapped their projects, as capturing CO2 turned out to be a hellish endeavour and storing it a nightmarish one. Only Norway is pushing ahead with its plan to store carbon dioxide in subsea caverns, in spite of a €1.4billion tally (and €100million annual operating costs).

Enter Climeworks, a Swiss company with a brave idea: instead of capturing CO2 from industrial chimneys, why not suck it out of the atmosphere? Instead of burying it underground, why not commercialise it? Its first plant in Zurich can already collect 900 tons of carbon dioxide per year, to be piped into a nearby greenhouse to help vegetables grow. That same CO2 could be employed in producing carbonated drinks, synthetic fuels and, theoretically, bricks. Separate research projects at UCLA and MIT have demonstrated the possibility of employing the very molecule that endangers our future as a raw commodity for construction materials. In the long-term, it could even partially displace cement production, one of the most carbon-intensive industrial processes out there.

However, the huge Climeworks machine can subtract the equivalent emissions of a mere 200 cars. We would need a bigger version, and hundreds of thousands of them all over the world, to make a difference to the climatic algebra. Needless to say, we already have a wondrous technology for going negative – photosynthesis. Halting deforestation altogether would still be the smartest way to make the subtractions. Yet, after almost two centuries of burgeoning additions and the chance of a catastrophic sum by the end of the current era, the more subtraction operators we have at our disposal, the better.

This was published in the October 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

Geographical’s regular look at the world of climate change. This month, Marco Magrini looks at the future of civil aviation

Early this summer, Phoenix’s international airport cancelled several dozen flights as the thermometer in Arizona was heading for a scorching 48°C. Dramatically, at that temperature air molecules may not be dense enough to provide the indispensable lift for aircraft to take off.

Last year was the hottest on record – surpassing 2015, which surpassed 2014 – and hints are already suggesting that 2017 will rise even further. With such a progression towards a warmer climate, how often will air traffic be disrupted? Can a fast-growing airline industry cope with the perils of a thinner atmosphere?

It is not a trivial question. Civil and commercial aviation are a crucial element of economic growth. According to the World Bank, around 15.5 billion tons of goods were shipped in 1970, up to 195 billion in 2015. There were 310 million passengers in 1970, up to 3.4 billion two years ago. The International Air Transport Association expects 7.2 billion passengers in 2035, yet another doubling in 20 years.

Civil aviation alone is responsible for two per cent of global CO2 emissions. However, if we add the nitrogen oxides, the water vapour and the particulates it emits, its influence on climate’s arithmetic is considered to be closer to four per cent. Major airlines have long been reluctant to swear an oath on emission reduction. They successfully rebelled when, in 2012, the European Commission tried to include aviation in its Emission Trading Scheme. During the painstaking negotiations that brought about the Paris Accord, just mentioning aviation was taboo.

Luckily though, last November the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) finally acquiesced to a carbon offsetting scheme. The agreement doesn’t urge the industry to innovate, but it may be a good starting point. A few airlines are paving the way (Virgin Atlantic cut its emissions per mile travelled by 22 per cent in ten years), even though the vast majority still see their business as inescapably linked to fossil fuels.

The US is now retreating from the Paris Accord. But the aviation agreement, in ICAO’s own words, ‘complements’ Paris. So no one really knows its fate. The voluntary period is set to begin in 2021. Were the American carriers to step away from it, it will never really take off. Just like their airplanes on a future, sweltering summer day.

This was published in the September 2017 edition of Geographical magazine.

A dramatic increase in dust storms across the western United States has occurred alongside an upsurge of valley fever. New research is exploring possible links between the two, and looking at the complex causes of both

The western United States, particularly states such as Arizona, California, New Mexico and Utah, has become drier and dustier over the past 40 years, and has experienced a 240 per cent increase in dust storms over that time as a result. Likewise, these same states have also seen an 800 per cent increase in cases of valley fever, a disease with flu-like symptoms which can occasionally be deadly. Researchers do not think this is a coincidence.

‘Valley fever is not contagious, it is caused by the coccidioides fungus, which lives in the soil,’ says Daniel Tong, atmospheric scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and lead author of the study. He believes that the dust storms are whipping up the soil and transporting the fungus into populated areas. ‘More dust storms increase the chance of the fungus being inhaled by people,’ he says.

In Arizona, where the majority of all US valley fever cases are reported, dust was more strongly correlated with the disease than any other known factors. Nonetheless, this does not make it the sole cause, as the fungus itself grows in wet soil. This means the outbreaks are also related to factors such as rainfall, heat, wind and soil disturbance. Cautious not to get ahead of the findings, Tong states: ‘We found a positive correlation, but we would like to collect more data to help put the pieces together.’

The largest number of US dust storms from 1988 to 2011 are concentrated in the southwest of the country, in the same states reporting the highest numbers of valley fever cases (Source: NOAA 2011)

It is crucial to understand this link, since many climate models indicate that we are in for more dust storms in the future. ‘The dust increase could be indicative of changes in large-scale climate systems,’ says Julian Wang, NOAA meteorologist. Specifically, the recent uptick in dust storms is linked to the warming sea surface temperatures of the North Pacific, which brings cooler and drier northerly winds into the southwestern United States. ‘The winds dry out the soil and kick up more dust storms,’ says Wang.

With drier weather expected to trigger stronger dust activity in the coming decades, all implications are being considered. Dust storms can degrade land, worsen asthma, and increase car accidents. ‘These events can transport the impacts of global climate variations onto local society and environments,’ says Wang.

Some of the most devastating dust storms in US history occurred during the Dust Bowl of the 1930s. For now, though, the team feels it is unlikely the storms could reach that scale. ‘The Dust Bowl was as much a human-caused disaster as a natural one,’ says Tom Gill, an environmental scientist at the University of Texas at El Paso. ‘Misguided land care practices, coupled with the Great Depression, magnified the effects of a major drought.’

Since then, modern soil conservation techniques and wind-reducing land practices have softened the impact of droughts that measure even stronger than those encountered in the 1930s. ‘That being said,’ continues Gill, ‘we know that the Southwest is subject to “megadroughts”, which last for decades, and is possibly overdue for one.’ Such a drought – which would be drier than the Dust Bowl – has not happened since European settlement and agricultural development of the region in the 1500s. ‘If – or when – a megadrought occurs, all bets are off,’ he warns.

Geographical’s regular look at the world of climate change. This month, Marco Magrini looks at the legal challenges that lie ahead

Once upon a time there were tobacco and asbestos litigations. When products once marketed as safe turned out to be potentially lethal, scores of lawyers filed and won numerous class actions against the two industries, with a total payout exceeding the $500billion mark. Now, it is time for climate change-related lawsuits to follow.

According to the Columbia Law School’s Sabin Center for Climate Change Law, more than 880 legal actions are pending in the courts of five continents, either to try constraining greenhouse gas emissions, or to press governments and corporations to adopt more aggressive climate policies. Take the legal challenge that Micronesia mounted in 2010 against the Czech Republic’s plans to expand its Prunéřov coal plant. Were the islanders bonkers? Not really. Carbon dioxide emitted in Europe adds to the atmosphere, which contributes to Arctic melting, which makes the Pacific Ocean rise. The challenge caused quite a stir, but the plant expanded anyway.

But what if this kind of litigation starts to spread the world over? Poor, guiltless, and low-lying countries may go up against rich, polluting ones. Climate-conscious US states (such as California or Washington) may challenge climate-denying Federal governments (such as the anti-science Trump administration that just scrapped the Paris Accord). More likely though, an upsurge in climate litigation would take aim at the usual targets – corporations.

According to the American climatologist Richard Heede, just five companies (ExxonMobil, BP, Shell, Chevron and ConocoPhillips) have extracted enough fossil fuels to account for 12.5 per cent of all anthropogenic carbon dioxide ever emitted. Add national oil and gas companies, such as Saudi Aramco or Russia’s Gazprom, and it turns out that nearly two-thirds of the world’s historical greenhouse gas emissions originate from less than 100 firms.

Climate change is escalating. The Arctic had a nightmarishly hot winter. Summer is not boding well in Turbat, Pakistan, which hit a record 53.5°C in May. For decades, scientists have been warning that this planet may be increasingly unlivable by the end of this century. If the emissions trajectory isn’t shifted soon, future generations will likely despise their grand and great-grandfathers, wishing they could sue them.

A study from the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences has revealed that the Arctic tundra could release significant amounts of nitrous oxide (also known as laughing gas) into the atmosphere given the right conditions

The Arctic tundra is renowned for being one of, if not the most, harshest environments on Earth. It is constantly covered in permafrost that freezes the ground metres deep, with the exception of the short summer months when flowers bloom.

‘Often overlooked is the fact that permafrost soils are also large nitrogen reservoirs,’ she says, ‘with a conservative estimate of 67 billion tons of total nitrogen in the upper three metres.’ Voigt goes on to put the magnitude of the nitrogen stocks into perspective: ‘The permafrost stocks are more than 500 times larger than the annual nitrogen load added as fertiliser to soils globally.’

Arctic permafrost melting (Image: George Burba)

Voigt collected 16 samples of permafrost peatland from different locations in Finnish Lapland to assess whether permafrost thaw will increase N2O emissions into the atmosphere. In order to account for different scenarios, the researchers kept the samples in two separate post-thaw conditions: one ‘dry’ scenario (an unaltered water table) and one ‘wet’ scenario (a raised water table).

The results highlighted those areas of tundra with vegetation emit very little nitrous oxide and actually help with reducing emissions. It was found that areas without vegetation, and that were more exposed, released small yet significant levels of the minor greenhouse gas.

The results mirror a previous study done in Northern Russia by Maija Repo at the UEF’s Kuopio campus. Repo and her team found that during the snow-free season, the peatland emitted as much N2O as a tropical forest does in a year.

Arctic vegetation is on the decline (Image: Maksimilian)

What is worrying about the results from Voigt and Repo’s studies is that the Arctic is browning, even despite recent trends until 2011 showing that the Arctic has experienced overall increases in the amounts of greenery.

This means that there is less vegetation overall and that the tundra is more vulnerable to leaking nitrous oxide as the permafrost thaws. This could be attributed to the fact that the lack of plants decreases the competition for mineral nitrogen, therefore allowing nitrate to build up in the soil, which bacteria metabolise to produce nitrous oxide.

Although nitrous oxide is classed as a minor greenhouse gas, it is roughly 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide. Back in 2009, Repo emphasised these fears to New Scientist magazine, saying: ‘Since the flow of the gas from the peat circles is so high, even a small increase in bare surfaces would cause significant changes in N2O emissions.’

The study makes it clear that, while these emissions are dangerous, the scale of the impact is highly dependent on external factors. As Voigt says: ‘Our results suggest that the magnitude of future N2O emissions depends mainly on landscape changes that alter soil moisture conditions.’